How Salesforce Launched Lightning Webinar Recap

Last month, we hosted a webinar based on our online guide “How Salesforce Launched Lightning in 7 Steps“. We had two Admins on the Salesforce IT team, Sr. Systems Specialist Jordan Mangini and Associate Systems Specialist Evelyn Kruskopf, join us to give their insights and tips for each step in the rollout.

Watch the full webinar recording here:

For the cliff notes version, here’s the summary of each step:

1. Communication

Developing an effective communication plan is fundamental to a successful rollout. A lot of change management is about making users aware and thus comfortable of the change that’s coming and you do that through communication.

Tip: Employ many different communication channels. Every user digests info differently – some will prefer updates in a chatter group, others won’t pay attention unless it’s announced in a town hall. Make sure you inform users where they seek information.

2. Analysis

Make sure you spend quality time understanding the complexity of your org and your users level of activity in Salesforce.

Tip: Review your org’s customizations, profiles, and user activity. Group users into different buckets and plan your rollout based on users’ readiness for Lightning. Users that mainly use chatter or look up data, can be moved early on. Additionally, users that will see benefits right away like the sales department should be prioritized. End-users that use customized apps or do complex tasks in Salesforce can be moved later in the rollout when you’ve thoroughly planned and prepared for their move.

3. Early Adopters

Early adopters are an Admin’s best friend. They are your superusers, the users passionate about making Salesforce work better and thus excited about moving to Lightning. It’s important to select a diverse set of early adopters, including users with different profiles, from different departments and roles and with different levels of activity.

Tip: Create an early adopter program and make those super users feel special. Being part of this program means being part of executive level meetings, providing feedback and being Lightning ambassadors for the rest of the company.

4. Executive Participation

Getting your executives support and participation will also be key to a successful rollout. Instead of the admin team or the solo admin working on this project in silo, executive participation from the outset ensures that the move-to-Lightning project is aligned with company priorities.

Tips: Get executive participation by developing demos that highlight features they use on a daily basis and show how they will look in Lightning Experience and highlight new features they’ll be able to use in the new interface.

5. Transparency

Being transparent throughout the rollout process will help increase adoption and reduce anxiety and fear of change. When people are fully aware, trained, and ready for the change, they are more likely to embrace it.

Tip: Be specific and clear about the changes coming to users, personalize communications.

6. Flexibility

Flexibility at Salesforce means letting users know they can switch back and forth between Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic when needed. This is another way to reduce anxiety and fear of change. We want users to be excited to use Lightning not worried about it.

Tip: Use the Adoption Tracker App from the AppExchange to track how users interact with Lightning Experience. Especially since you’re highlighting the ability to move back and forth, you’ll want to keep tabs on how much your users are in Lightning Experience vs Salesforce Classic to be able to pinpoint areas of improvement.

7. Feedback

If you haven’t noticed this already, feedback is huge at Salesforce. We make sure it’s part of everything we do. So for rolling out Lightning Experience we made sure users were able to provide feedback easily. We used and still use a chatter group for most of the feedback capture. Chatter is great because it’s in real time and all the time. People feel like they have direct, continuous access to the people making the changes and that has lead to a lively chatter group that to this day helps improve the Lightning rollout at Salesforce.

Tip: Make sure you assign an owner to your chatter group. In order for the group to be used and have active discussions and produce valuable feedback, there needs to be back and forth between you (and your early adopters) and your users. Let them know they are heard when they provide feedback!

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